Spiggot's Quest [Paperback]

Garry Kilworth (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Time Warner Books Uk (2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1841491268
• ISBN-13: 978-1841491264
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Nothing I haven't read before., January 23, 2010

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Skylark (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Spiggot's Quest (Knights of Liofwende) (Paperback)

This book won a local award in my area, which perhaps raised my expectations a little too high before I read it. I thought that Spiggot's Quest was quite disappointing and unoriginal. Anyone who has ever taken an interest in fairytales and mythology will instantly recognise many of the character types and incidents in this story and be able to easily predict the outcome. Most stories about faeries portray them as being cold-hearted tricksters, for example, and this book is no exception. I even recognised more specific events that occurred from other stories I've read in the past.

This book appears to differ by toting the main character as a boggart, a faerie creature, but I found this somewhat inaccurate. The boggart's (Spiggot's) quest is to deliver a suit of armour to the faerie king, but he immediately meets a human boy (Jack) whose goal is to return to the mortal world. Most of the book actually tended towards Jack's point of view, and Spiggot (as an outsider) was thus very difficult to sympathise with. His special skills were barely utilised, and when he leapt into action it was glossed over in a way that made his actions seem very bland and unimportant. For that matter, so were Jack's. Neither main character had much in the way of personality or depth, I have to say.

I found most of the characters very thin (eg, for someone wanting to go home so much, Jack doesn't talk or even think about home), ignorant (eg, it seems Jack is unfamiliar with fairytales, as he commits a few inane acts that well-read children will know never to do in Faerieland), and often very cruel. In one instance, Jack deliberately sells a friend into slavery, despite having earlier admonished Spiggot for doing the very same thing! On multiple other occasions, he encourages Spiggot into life-threatening situations that could easily be avoided, putting the boggart's life at risk with no guilt at all - what a horrible person! I found it impossible to sympathise with him after that. Funnily enough, the nicest character turned out to be the giant rat, but he didn't make up for the others. The late inclusion of a female love interest with no personality didn't help.

I also found the plot greatly lacking: 'Deliver the armour, search for a way back to Earth. Fight monsters and be tricked by faeries in the meantime.' That was basically the whole book. Granted, the story was to be continued in a sequel, but I'd really hoped for more than just a journey from A to B in this volume. There's only so much monster-killing and highly predictable fairy trickery you can take in one book before getting bored.

Having said that, it could be a lot worse. There's a lot of interesting discussion between Jack and Spiggot about the nature of faeries, and to children unfamiliar with British mythology or fairytales there could be a wealth of fascinating new tales hidden in this novel. And it *did* win an award (though I'm not sure how). However, young readers with a love of fantasy or mythology will probably be disappointed, as most of the material is taken from things they are likely familiar with, and there are no real creative insights in this novel compared to other similar stories.